Part 51 (2/2)

It was cool this high, especially compared with the desert heat on his ride in. The road was no longer so good. De l'Orme had suffered its potholes. Because tourists no longer came here in such abundance, there was less reason to maintain the asphalt. The Holy Lands didn't pull them in like they used to. The revelation of h.e.l.l as a common network of tunnels had achieved what h.e.l.l itself could not, the end of spiritual fear. The death of G.o.d at the hands of existentialism and materialism had been grievous enough. Now the death of Supreme Evil had turned the landscape of afterlife into a cheap haunted house. From Moses to Mohammed to Augustine, the carnies had been good for their day, but no one was buying it anymore.

Along with the road that led to its high walls, St. Catherine's was falling into disrepair. De l'Orme had listened to the scandalized abbot tell how a number of the monks had turned idiorhythmic, acquiring property in the now-abandoned tourist village, eating meat, putting icons and mirrors and rugs in their monastic apartments. Such corruption led to disobedience, of course. And what was a monastery without obedience? Even the shapeless bramble tree in St. Catherine's courtyard, said to be Moses' burning bush, was dying.

De l'Orme drew a lungful of the evening breeze, breathing the incense like oxygen. He could smell an almond tree nearby, even now, in winter. Someone was growing a small pot of basil. And there was a sweet odor, ever so faint: the bodies of dead saints.

Anthropologists called it second burial, this practice of disinterring their dead after several years and adding the bones and skulls of monks to the monastery's collection. The enamel house was jokingly called the University. The dead go on teaching through their memory, so went the tradition. And what will you teach them, Thomas? de l'Orme wondered. Grace? Forgiveness? Or a warning against the darkness?

Evening vespers was beginning. Remarkably, a caged parakeet had been allowed into the courtyard. Its song matched the monks 'Kyrie eleison, the notes of a tiny angel.

At moments like this, de l'Orme longed to return to the cloth, or at least to the hermit's cell. If you let it be just as it was, the world was a surfeit of riches. Hold still, and the entire universe was your lover. But it was too late for that.

Santos arrived in a Jeep that rattled on the corrugated dirt. He disturbed a herd of goats, you could hear the bells and scurry of hooves. De l'Orme listened. Santos was alone. His stride was powerful and wide.

The parakeet stopped. The Kyrie eleisons did not. De l'Orme let him find his own way.

After a few minutes, Santos put his head inside de l'Orme's chamber. 'There you are,' he said.

'Come in,' said de l'Orme. 'I didn't know if you'd make it before nightfall.'

'Here I am,' said Santos. 'And look, you have our supper. I brought nothing.'

'Sit, you must be tired.'

'It was a long trip,' Santos admitted.

'You've been busy.'

'I came as quickly as I could. Is he buried, then?'

'Today. In the cemetery.'

'It was good?'

'They treated him as one of their own. He would have been pleased.'

'I didn't like him much. But you loved him, I know. Are you all right?'

'Certainly,' said de l'Orme. He made himself rise and opened his arms and gave Santos an embrace. The smell of the younger man's sweat and the barren Mosaic desert was good. Santos had the sun trapped in his pores, it seemed.

'He led a full life,' Santos sympathized.

'Who knows what more he might have discovered?' said de l'Orme. He gave the broad back a tap and they parted the embrace. De l'Orme sat carefully on his three-legged wooden stool. Santos lowered his satchel to the floor and took the stool de l'Orme had arranged on the far side of the table.

'And now? Where do we go from here? What do we do?'

'Let's eat,' said de l'Orme. 'We can discuss tomorrow over our meal.'

'Olives. Goat cheese. An orange. Bread. A jug of wine,' Santos said. 'All the makings for a Last Supper.'

'If you wish to mock Christ, that's your business. But don't mock your food,' de l'Orme said. 'You don't need to eat if you're not hungry.'

'Just a little joke. I'm famished.'

'There should be a candle, too,' said de l'Orme. 'It must be dark. But I had no matches.'

'It's still twilight,' said Santos. 'There's light enough. I prefer the atmosphere.'

'Then pour the wine.'

'What could have brought him here, I wonder,' said Santos. 'You told me Thomas had finished with the search.'

'It's clear now, Thomas was never going to be finished with the search.'

'Was there something here he was looking for?' De l'Orme could hear Santos's puzzlement. He was really asking why de l'Orme had instructed him to come all this way.

'I thought at first he had come for the Codex Sinaiticus,' de l'Orme answered. Santos would know that the Codex was one of the oldest ma.n.u.scripts of the New Testament. It totaled three thousand volumes, only a few of which still remained in this library. 'But now I think otherwise.'

'Yes?'

'I believe Satan lured him here,' de l'Orme answered.

'Lured him? How?'

'Perhaps with his presence. Or a message. I don't know.'

'He has a sense of theater, then,' Santos remarked between bites of food. 'The mountain of G.o.d.'

'So it appears.'

'You're not hungry?'

'I have no appet.i.te tonight.'

The monks were hard at work in the church. Their deep chant reverberated through the stone. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy. Domine Deus.

'Are you crying for Thomas?' Santos suddenly asked.

De l'Orme made no move to wipe away the tears flowing down his cheeks. 'No,' he said. 'For you.'

'Me? But why? I'm here with you now.'

'Yes.'

Santos grew quieter. 'You're not happy with me.'

'It's not that.'

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